Ireland won three medals at the 2026 World Rowing Championships, which finished at the Bosbaan in Amsterdam on Sunday.
Fiona Murtagh took silver in the women’s single sculls, Mags Cremen and Zoe Hyde won gold in the women’s double sculls, and Cremen returned with Konan Pazzaia for a second silver in the mixed double sculls. Murtagh, Cremen and Hyde all competed for Team Ireland at Paris 2024.
Murtagh silver in a rematch of last year’s final
Murtagh came to Amsterdam as defending world champion, having won the 2025 title in Shanghai by three hundredths of a second from Great Britain’s Lauren Henry.
She finished second in her heat behind South Africa’s Paige Badenhorst to qualify fourth-fastest, won her quarter-final in 7:20.80 and won her semi-final in 7:24.68 by 1.57 seconds, entering Sunday’s A final as the third-fastest qualifier.
Olympic champion Karolien Florijn and Switzerland’s Aurelia-Maxima Janzen led the early stages of the final, with Henry taking the lead in the middle of the race. Murtagh moved through in the closing stages to take second from Florijn.
Henry won in 7:15.93, becoming the first British woman to win the world women’s single sculls title. Murtagh finished in 7:18.04 and Florijn in 7:18.84.
“I’m really proud of how I’ve grown throughout this competition,” Murtagh said afterwards. She had spent several weeks off the water during a difficult build-up between the Lucerne World Cup in June and the team’s final camp.
Gold for Cremen and Hyde
The championship high point came on Friday evening, when Cremen and Hyde beat a strong Dutch crew on home water to win the women’s double sculls.
They had signalled it all week, winning their heat and then their semi-final in 7:09.17, almost three seconds clear of Italy. The final was a harder proposition. Racing from lane one, Ireland sat fractionally behind the Netherlands at 500 metres and responded when the Dutch lifted the pace around halfway. Still behind at 1,500 metres, Cremen and Hyde produced a remarkable last 300 to reel them in.
It caps a season of steady progress for the crew, with bronze at World Cup 1 in Seville and fourth at World Cup 3 in Lucerne.
Both women were in the Team Ireland boat in Paris, but in different crews: Cremen in the lightweight double with Aoife Casey, Hyde in the double with Alison Bergin. Lightweight rowing came off the Olympic programme after Paris, and squads worldwide have been rebuilding around that change. This partnership is one of the boats to come out of it, and it is now the fastest in the world.
A second medal for Cremen
Cremen was back on the water on Sunday morning in the mixed double sculls alongside Konan Pazzaia, who had stepped across from the men’s quad. They qualified third from their semi-final and took silver in the afternoon, holding off the United States as Roos de Jong and Simon van Dorp won for the Netherlands in 6:15.80.
Other Irish Results
Fintan McCarthy finished third in his men’s single sculls quarter-final in 6:51.28, fourth in a semi-final won by Germany’s Oliver Zeidler, and fifth in the B final. McCarthy won Olympic gold in the lightweight double sculls at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.
The women’s four of Claire Feerick, Aisling Hayes, Emma Waters and Emma Fagan finished fourth in their semi-final and won the B final in 6:26.34 for seventh overall.
The women’s quadruple sculls of Sophia Young, Emily Hegarty, Alison Bergin and Izzy Clements finished fourth in their semi-final in 6:28.94.
Imogen Magner and Natalie Long finished fifth in their women’s pair semi-final and fifth in the B final in 7:14.03 for 11th overall.
Olympic qualification for Los Angeles 2028 begins at the 2027 World Rowing Championships in Lucerne.